TracFone, which operates (among others) the Straight Talk and Net10 prepaid carrier brands, has clarified its smart phone data policy to explicitly put a 2.5GB throttle point on its offerings. While both Straight Talk and Net10 have been extremely popular as inexpensive choices in the prepaid phone service arena, their policies on throttling or cutting off user's data connections with little warning were somewhat suspect.

According to official statements from TracFone, we now know that both Straight Talk and Net10 will give users of its "unlimited" plans up to 2.5GB of high-speed data access, throttling speeds to 2G (EDGE) after that point. Once your next 30-day renewal begins, you go back to a new 2.5GB data bucket. TracFone specified that this applies to BYOD plans on both carriers with either AT&T or T-Mobile SIMs.

Previous statements from TracFone refuted the suggestion that its prepaid brands only offered 1.5GB of data per month, and while this confirms that those statements were true it may not be the response many of us wanted to hear. In the end it is important that carriers disclose when you will be throttled or cut off, and with this bit of transparency customers now have more information when choosing which carrier they want to go with.